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Self- Criticism 
North and South 



AN ADDRESS 

Delivered before the Faculty and 

Students of Washington and 

Lee University 

By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD 
on January nth, igo6 



WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY 

LEXINGTON, VIRGINIA 

1906 




Self- Criticism 
North and South 



AN ADDRESS 

Delivered before the Faculty and 

Students of Washington and 

Lee University 

By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD 
on January nth, igo6 



WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY 

LEXINGTON, VIRGINIA 

1906 






Gift 

Author 

6 0*06 



SELF-CRITICISM NORTH 
AND SOUTH 

xA.s an editor I appreciate the privilege of 
speaking to the students of this ancient institu- 
tion now taking on a new Ufe and enjoying a new 
vigor under its present administration. Just how 
great the service Washington and Lee is render- 
ing to the South and to the nation would in itself 
be a tempting subject for me as a Northern 
journalist. I could, perhaps, dwell upon some 
aspect of it which may not have occurred to you. 
But this temptation I must put aside. My pur- 
pose to-day is to speak of some recent aspects of 
our Northern political development and of the 
value of self-criticism both North and South, 
which will perhaps interest you since this is 
above all else a place of historical associations 
and of hallowed traditions. 

As you are aware, the year 1905 was dis- 
tinguished in the United States by a revolt 
against those political leaders known as bosses, 
who had by hook or by crook possessed them- 
selves of certain executive and legislative func- 
tions of our city and state governments which 



SELF-CRITICISM 

are by right inherent in the people or their duly 
chosen representatives. How subtly these dan- 
gerous powers were acquired or during what 
period of time is of no moment here. The all- 
important fact remains that the American people 
awoke at last to a realization that, Gulliver-like, 
they were being bound hand and foot by a tribe 
of Lilliputian politicians who actually deemed 
themselves the arbiters of the country's fate, em- 
powered to dispense offices, rich financial favors 
and legislation — to make and unmake mayors, 
governors and presidents, quite as they saw fit. 
Fortunately this Gulliver awoke in tim.e, and 
awoke all the more widely because of a sudden 
appreciation that some of the political bosses, par- 
ticularly those in the North, had gradually chang- 
ed their characters and had, by selling themselves 
for cash, become puppets of men of finance and 
without conscience, and of the soulless corpora- 
tions which have developed in such numbers and 
grown to astounding size even within your life- 
times. It was this state of affairs and the proof 
of its existence brought out by the magazine rev- 
elations of a pretendedly repentant frenzied 
financier, and by the inquiry into the scandalous 
methods of our insurance magnates which finally 
brought our Gulliver to his senses at last. That 
was a glorious victory won at the polls on No- 
vember 7th. In Massachusetts, in New York, in 
New Jersey, in Pennsylvania, and in Ohio, the 
people rose in their might, voting with a most 

2 



NORTH AND SOUTH 

notable independence against the bosses and all 
their works. Party lines were well-nigh for- 
gotten. When the day was over there were beat- 
en or checked bosses in every one of the states 
mentioned. 

Important as were the revelations I have 
just mentioned in bringing about these striking 
results, in which every true American must re- 
joice, I would not for a moment have you think 
that they were due solely to Mr. Lawson or to 
the insurance investigation ; or, in Ohio, to the 
liquor question and the exposure of gang rule 
in Cincinnati. These were undoubtedly import- 
ant factors in the revolution. But they could 
not have become even the final straws had there 
not grown up in the North a school of merci- 
less critics of American institutions, men who be- 
lieved that they could not render higher patri- 
otic service than to find fault where things went 
wrong. The first and perhaps the best known 
of these in the journalistic world was Mr. Ed- 
win L. Godkin, who founded the Nation in 1865, 
and later became editor of the New York Even- 
ing Post. He soon had distinguished associates. 
There was the knightly George William Curtis, 
long editor of Harper s Weekly, who was in turn 
succeeded by Carl Schurz. The Springfield Re- 
publican was fortunate in having the Bolles, 
father and son. There were the editors of the 
New York Times, the Boston Herald, and oth- 
ers, who guided their newspapers by high prin- 
3 



SELF-CRITICISM 

ciples as fixed as the stars, and who did so ir- 
respective of party and partisanship. Under 
their tutelage there gradually grew up a new 
school of political thought, of which the "Mug- 
wumps," as they were first called, or Inde- 
pendents, were the outgrowth. Tliese men, see- 
ing evils in both of the great political parties, 
took a neutral position, and have ever since 1884 
held the balance of power in national elections. 
A more thankless task than that of these edi- 
tors could hardly be imagined. There was no 
epithet too rigorous to apply to them. At first 
people thought them unpatriotic and base That 
any one could see anything better in any other 
country and say so appeared a species of trea- 
son. Mr. Godkin, for instance, was charged 
with being a foreign emissary paid by British 
gold when he denounced the American system 
of protective duties, and demanded the free trade 
which has made England great and glorious. 
Even at the end of his long career it was solemn- 
ly printed in many newspapers that he assembled 
his staff every morning to begin the day's work 
by singing *'God Save the Queen." He and his 
school were men who "befouled their own nests" 
and took no pleasure in life, save in decrying their 
country's institutions. They were the rankest 
of pessimists, Cassandra-like in their continued 
prophecies of evil. It was insisted that their 
policies were merely destructive, and not con- 
structive — always a dreadfully serious charge, 



NORTH AND SOUTH 

as well as the easiest one to make and never 
more unfounded than in this case. For it was 
they and their followers, who, to cite only one 
fact, made possible the coming of Civil Service 
reform — a most patriotic achievement. But their 
greatest constructive service was the holding up 
of high national ideals, and insisting upon them 
in season and out of season. They pilloried 
bosses year in and year oiit, when it was most 
unpopular to do so, and long before boss-baiting 
had become a favorite and well-patronized 
sport. They were the ones who mercilessly laid 
bare the shortcomings of their own cities; who 
denounced municipal misgovernment so per- 
sistently that they finally lashed the public con- 
science into the formation of good government 
clubs, and social reform organizations. 

At first a mere handful crying out in the 
wilderness, there grew up about them rapidly 
men in and out of public life who stood by them 
in their endeavors, and supported on the plat- 
form or in the pulpit the views these men ex- 
pressed in their editorial pages. As is so often 
the case, as the movement developed its origina- 
tors were more or less forgotten. Nobody re- 
members to-day the courage it took to bolt from 
a party when such bolting had been unheard of 
for twenty-five years, and when the Republican 
party was still considered of the Lord's Annoint- 
ed. People have forgotten that so sober a 
journal as the Chicago Tribune could aeliber- 

5 



SELF-CRITICISM 

ately declare on October 3, 1884, of the bolters 
that: "They have gone down into the political 
cesspools and wallowed in the filth, and all the 
time these brawling Pharisees and canting, 
sleek-faced hypocrites have boasted of their su- 
perior 'tone' and daintiness, their gilt-edged 
morality, their adoration of high moral issues, 
'and their ineffable political sanctify, as com- 
pared with that of ordinary mortals." Their op- 
position to Mr. Blaine, it appears, was due in the 
eyes of this journal to his believing "in America 
against the world, while they believed in Eng- 
land against America." Speaking of its neigh- 
bor, the New York Tribune asserted that the 
Evening Post "sets up a new standard of private 
morality and civic virtue, but it is discarded in 
a thousand homes where the principles it has 
abandoned are made welcome ; and its only per- 
verts are men for whom its founder would have 
been ashamed to lift his pen." 

As a matter of fact there had not long ex- 
isted in the North that toleration which made 
any criticism of American institutions possible. 
Foreign visitors to this country previous to the 
Civil War found no plainer proof of American 
provincialism than the indignation with which 
their frank criticisms were received. Harriet 
Martineau, the gifted Englishwoman, who was 
shocked by the lack of culture she found on this 
side of the water, and who expressed her views 
in a lengthy book, was vilified and reviled. 



NORTH AND SOUTH 

Many elderly people to-day have vivid recollec- 
tions of the intense indignation created by 
Charles Dickens's *' American Notes." He found 
things coarse and crude here, and he said so. 
All America winced. He was given no credit 
for his honesty or sincerity, but was called a 
silk-stockinged English snob, *' stuck-up" and 
proud, who did not know what he was writing 
about, and if he did politeness to those who en- 
tertained him should have insured his keeping his 
mouth shut. It is easy to laugh to-day at such 
silly vaporings, and to see from the viewpoint 
of our present-day standards how merited the 
criticisms of foreign travellers of that time were. 
But how much of that spirit of fierce in- 
tolerant resentment of criticism remained as late 
as 1884, was well brought out in the first Cleve- 
land campaign. To-day, criticism by party re- 
volt, in the North at least, attracts no attention, 
while foreign critics are read with respect, al- 
lowed to go without defamation, and, if contro- 
verted are opposed in decent and moderate 
language. Indeed it may be said that foreign 
criticisms are now eagerly welcomed. The views 
of the London, Paris, ar>d Berlin press on a 
Presidential election or other American happen- 
ings are cabled as regularly as the opinions of 
Chicago papers are quoted by those in New York, 
or Boston, or Philadelphia. 

In other words, the old blatant American 
spirit that everything in this country was the 
7 



SELF-CRITICISM 

biggest, grandest, and best because it was Amer- 
ican, has largely passed from the land. The men 
who, like Mr. Lincoln Steffens, uncover the 
shame of our cities and our States, are no longer 
accused of a malevolent desire to defame our 
own institutions, but are honored as men work- 
ing for better government and higher ideals 
should be. When four years ago an effort was 
made to redeem New York from the horrors of 
the epidemic of officially-favored vice, which was 
fast making a Sodom of it, the best citizens of 
the metropolis did not hesitate to portray con- 
ditions precisely as they were. The Women's 
Municipal League printed a pamphlet entitled 
"Facts for Fathers and Mothers," which called 
a spade a spade, and explained just what was 
disgracing the city. Instantly Tammany Hall 
set up the old cry that the reformers were 
wantonly destroying the city's fair name, and in- 
juring her standing at home and abroad. But 
this hoary old pretence, this shameless bit of 
roguery, fell flat. New Yorkers had at last been 
educated to the point where they knew that the 
city was being disgraced by the conditions which 
were being exposed, and not by the exposures. 
They recognized that so terrible a social sore 
could only be treated by being laid bare pre- 
vious to excision or amelioration. Rising in 
their might, they turned out of office the men re- 
sponsible, thereby honoring the city and redeem- 
ing its good name. A persistent hushing up of 



NORTH AND SOUTH 

the scandal would have been a terrible wrong to 
its victims, made possible the enticing to their 
destruction of thousands of still innocent men 
and women, and would only have deferred an 
explosion certain to come if the city were not to 
decay utterly. A clearer case of the necessity of 
self-criticism for advancement could hardly be 
cited. 

The recent elections, viewed in this light, 
prove clearly how much more critical of them- 
selves and their institutions the people have be- 
come. Instead of there being divisions merely 
on national questions like slavery, the tariff, or 
the currency, we have exciting campaigns on 
matters of purely local or domestic moment, 
which are eagerly followed by people thousands 
of miles away. Not only is there a readiness to 
admit that our institutions are faulty, but under 
the spur of merciless criticism there are honest 
efforts to remedy conditions which twenty years 
ago were deemed inevitable and unchangeable 
concomitants of our form of government. The 
political heroes of the hour, Colby, Jerome, and 
Folk, have come to the front by their readiness 
to reveal, denounce, and criticise. As critics of 
existing conditions were they chosen to office, yet 
they could hardly have appeared on the political 
horizon twenty-five years ago, because the way 
had not yet been prepared for them. The public 
had not yet been convinced that there was some- 
thing seriously wrong with our political organi- 



SELF-CRITICISM 

zations, that our party system had broken down 
and been captured by dangerous corporate forces, 
who care not at all whether a man is Republi- 
can or Democratic so long as he does their bid- 
ding. 

That this new struggle for freedom has en- 
listed the sympathies of the young college men 
of the North is obvious; that it has not yet 
sufficiently laid hold of the youth of the South 
is a cause of widespread regret. Speaking be- 
fore a Northern audience the other day, Pres- 
ident Alderman of the University of Virginia 
dwelt eloquently upon the promise of the young 
man of the South, saying of him : *'He is a 
fine, hopeful figure, of strong and high politi- 
cal instincts, facing tardily a fierce industrial- 
ism and a new democracy with its grandeur and 
temptations, his ambitions and dreams moving 
about them and yet holding fast through the 
conservatism in his blood to the noble concepts 
of public probity and scorn of dishonor." What 
is even more striking is the letter of a Northern 
railway president of note, which I was recently 
shown. Writing to a brother editor of mine of 
the grave industrial questions facing the nation, 
and of latter-day ideas of national ownership of 
certain lines of business, this Northerner wound 
up by a fervid declaration that he looked to the 
young men of the South to cast the deciding 
vote in the solution of these problems, and 
counted on their voting with conservatism and 

10 



NORTH AND SOUTH 

wisdom. Had they wished he and President 
Alderman might have quoted as proof of the 
correctness of their opinions the admirable at- 
titude of the South two years ago, when the 
emissaries of Mr. Hearst were penetrating this 
Southern country in the endeavor to purchase 
the Presidency for their unworthy employer. 
While many States in the North and West yield- 
ed readily to the gold which was this man's sole 
argument why he should be given the nomina- 
tion of the Democratic party, the South stood 
like a stone wall. There was, truly, it then ap- 
peared, a ''concept of public probity and a scorn 
of dishonor" among the older men of the South, 
as well as the younger, which was strong enough 
to save party and nation from the disgrace that 
threatened it. For this all concerned deserve 
great credit, and it has, I am glad to say, been 
freely accorded to them by the Northern press. 

But encouraging as it is that there are some 
public men in the United States who are proof 
against bribery and corruption, in whatever 
form, it is none the less obvious that there are 
many great political evils south of Mason and 
Dixon's line, which demand the attention of your 
best and bravest. If the genus boss is not as 
distinctly developed as in the North, there are 
in Southern political life demagogues enough, 
and they are ever ready to play upon the pas- 
sions and prejudices of the people in order to 
obtain office. It was President Alderman, you 
11 



SELF-CRITICISM 

will remember, who last winter deplored at a 
public dinner the inferiority of Southern political 
leaders of the present time to those of ante-bel- 
lum days, asking, according to first reports of 
the affair, ''Where are the Calhouns and Clays ?'' 
Certainly they are not masked by the names of 
Vardaman of Mississippi or Jeff Davis of Ar- 
kansas. To say that these men misrepresent the 
brains and breeding of the South is merely to 
state a plain truth. To regard them as typical 
Southerners would be to insult this entire sec- 
tion, for it would mean that the South in the 
one case was lacking in truth, fairness, dignity, 
and chivalry, and in the other that it approved of 
lawlessness and public brawling in a State of- 
ficer. I might lengthen this list, but these two 
names will suffice. Your own experience will 
suggest others. 

Nor is the South free from the evils of city 
misgovernment. Take Louisville for example. 
In her last election there were incredible scenes 
of disorder and lawlessness, and widespread of- 
ficial and judicial corruption. A Southern 
gentleman of standing, a graduate of Yale, and 
a lifelong resident of Louisville, speaks of the 
situation as follows: "Direct looting exists be- 
yond common belief. There is no criminal law 
in Louisville save by grace. There is judicial 
protection; there is even judicial persecution. The 
administration of law in the police court is the 
city's shame. Grand juries are in some way cor- 

12 



NORTH AND SOUTH 

rupted. Indictments in the most flagrant cases, 
where pohtics are concerned, cannot be secured. 
This partnership with the machine comprehends 
all the agents of criminal justice from the pa- 
trolman to the governor. The proteges of the 
Government are the keepers of disorderly sa- 
loons and houses — the gamblers, thieves, and 
other lawbreakers who can give money or ser- 
vices at elections. Four years ago a conspicuous 
gambler was convicted. The verdict was in at 
four. Before bedtime Gov. Beckham had signed 
an absolute pardon, and the jailer had lost his 
guest. In 1903 the Louisville election was stolen 
bodily with a thousand breaches of law on that 
election day." What occurred at the last elec- 
tion was even worse. 

If the story of such wrong is not sufficient 
to ''stir your hearts to mutiny and rage," I would 
remind you of some other great causes which 
should appeal to your hearts and to your minds 
as college men. There are the unspeakable chain 
gangs which still disgrace the South; there is 
the dangerous spread of child labor in the fac- 
tories for which Northern capitalists, to their 
shame be it said, share the responsibility with 
your supine legislators. There is the poor and 
inadequate school system to be upbuilt. There 
is the liquor problem to be solved — at least in 
the rural communities. The whole question of 
the suffrage is yet to be worked out, for in Vir- 
ginia and in Maryland, particularly, there have 

13 



SELF-CRITICISM 

been sinister efforts not merely to disfranchise 
the negroes, but whites as well, and always in 
the interests of a political ring or oligarchy 
which seeks in this way to keep forever in its 
control, and that of its heirs and assigns, the po- 
litical destinies of the various States. Surely the 
call to patriotic service is loud and ringing. As 
American patriots the mere recital of these con- 
ditions should serve to strengthen your arms, 
and steel your hearts, to go forth from these 
cloistered walls and do battle for your rights and 
your institutions. 

But how? you may ask. My reply is first 
by unsparing criticism of that which is wrong 
and false, narrow and intolerant, degrading in- 
stead of uplifting, ungenerous instead of 
generous, low and debasing instead of 
high and inspiring, precisely as the in- 
dependent editors of the North under- 
took their task of rousing the people years ago. 
If you will take my word for it, there is noth- 
ing that the South needs so much to-day as self- 
searching, self-criticism, freedom of opinion, and 
readiness to accept and profit by the well-meant 
criticisms of other Americans who have no end 
in view save the welfare of their country. But 
I had rather you took another's and a wiser man's 
word for it than my own. While this paper was 
being penned there died one of the noblest, brav- 
est, and wisest gentlemen it was ever my good 
fortune to meet — Chancellor Walter B. Hill of 

14 



ISfORTH AND SOUTH 

the University of Georgia, a Georgian by birth, 
training, and residence. When he passed away 
the country lost a patriot it could ill afford to 
spare. As a Georgian he watched every politi- 
cal and social move in his State with a most 
jealous eye, and spoke out with vigor against any 
procedure which did not commend itself to his 
judgment, and to his high-minded morality. To 
my mind, of all his valuable services none was 
greater than the "plea for tolerance," which he 
published in the Atlanta Constitution less than 
a year ago apropos of Senator Bailey's attack 
upon President Alderman for that same alleged 
criticism of Southern public men which 1 have 
already cited. Senator Bailey assailed Dr. Alder- 
man for criticising the South to a Northern au- 
dience, and withdrew his name from the com- 
mittee which was raising an endowment for his 
alma mater. In other words he actually wanted 
to punish his own university because its presi- 
dent differed with him in his estimate of pres- 
ent day statesmen. This was too much for 
Chancellor Hill. He took up his pen to say that 
the question whether Dr. Alderman was right or 
wrong became insignificant beside the larger 
question whether Senator Bailey was right or 
wrong in his method of dealing with this differ- 
ence of opinion. "Have we," he asked, "free- 
dom of opinion in the South? Must every man 
who thinks above a whisper do so at the peril of 
his reputation or his influence, or at the deadlier 

15 



SELF-CRITICISM 

risk of having an injury inflicted upon the in- 
stitution or the cause he represents?" 

Since Mr. Walter H. Page, a loyal and de- 
voted son of the South, had said in his magazine, 
the World's Work, that *'The curse of the South 
to-day is small men in politics," Chancellor Hill 
thought that Senator Bailey, to be consistent, 
should have had passed a bill excluding the 
World's Work from the Congressional Library 
and the mails. So far as Dr. Alderman's views were 
concerned, Mr. Hill thought that considering all 
the circumstances the South was to be congratu- 
lated upon having as able and as broad men in 
public life as it did. The great evil, he found, 
is the ''enforced unanimity of thought within 
the lines of one party," which causes a "deadly 
paralysis of intellect," and he thought that if 
similar conditions prevailed in the North the 
North would have suffered still more. The trutli 
of this observation is proved by the experience 
of Pennsylvania; there, too, there has been a 
unanimity of thought in one party — the Republi- 
can — and with it there came not only "a deadly 
paralysis of intellect" in public life, but, what is 
more, a deadly paralysis of the moral instincts, 
as is clearly shown by the careers of Senators 
Quay and Penrose. If you have made a care- 
ful study of our institutions in such works as 
those of Bryce and De Tocqueville you will 
readily agree that one thing is necessary to a 
16 



NORTH AND SOUTH 

safe and sane democracy, and that is a sound 
and vigorous political opposition. 

While therefore differing from Dr. Alderman, 
Chancellor Hill none the less declared that Sena- 
tor Bailey's extraordinary attack gave him the 
text for a warning '^against the worst evil in 
our intellectual, social, political, and religious 
life, the illiberality that is ready to inflict the in- 
jury of rebuke and ostracism as a penalty for dif- 
ference of opinion." "We all know," he con- 
tinued, "whence this situation comes. It is one 
of the entailed curses of slavery. Our fathers in 
the assertion of their constitutional rights and 
their property interests stood together for the de- 
fence of slavery after the world at large and the 
thought of the age had entered up judgment of 
condemnation against it. This produced inevit- 
ably in the South a morbid self-consciousness, an 
awareness of itself as an object of criticism and 
attack, and a touch-me-not sensitiveness." This, 
he explained, had lasted all too long. The South 
is not yet loyal to Jefferson's inaugural of 1801, 
in which that great Southerner said : "Error of 
opinion may be tolerated as long as truth is left 
free to combat it." I cannot resist quoting also 
Chancellor Hill's closing sentiment: "The Al- 
mighty, who sends rain upon the just and un- 
just, rebukes the narrowness of persecution. We 
have gotten away from the stake, the dungeon, 
the rack, and the thumb-screw ; but every vindic- 
17 



SELF-CRITICISM 

tive action by which we seek to punish a fellow - 
citizen for a divergence of opinion by inflicting 
injury upon him or the cause he represents is an 
abridgment of that reasonable liberty of thought 
and speech, which is the richest and ripest heri- 
tage of freedom, and the indispensable requisite 
for the ascertainment of truth. This is a topic, 
Mr. Editor, on which the Southern press, as 
well as the pulpit, forum, and platform, should 
speak out loud." Braver and truer sentiments 
than these may have been uttered by some other 
teacher in this broad country of ours, buc if so 
I have yet to read them. 

Do not, young gentlemen of Washington 
and Lee, underestimate the gravity of this evil 
of intolerance upon which this splendid Southern 
leader dwelt, because it has been your good for- 
tune to attend a university which has no censor- 
ship of its platform or lecture room. Remember 
that if the University of Georgia, Sewanec, Trin- 
ity College of North Carolina, Vanderbilt, and 
others similarly permit freedom of utterance and 
opinion, there are far too many institutions in 
which there is a mediaeval attempt not to teach 
the truth, cost what it may, but to teach a truth 
limited by prejudice or by preconceptions. You 
will remember that Prof. Andrew Sledd was 
driven away from Emory College for printing an 
article in the Atlantic Monthly which was dis- 
tasteful to the college's trustees. With the case 
of Professor Bassett you are also familiar. The 

18 



NORTH AND SOUTH 

attempt to drive him out of his chair failed ut- 
terly. Instead came a ringing declaration of aca- 
demic liberty, which Chancellor Hill described 
as "A document which will be an immortal chap- 
ter in the history of civilization in this country." 
I hear many complaints from Southerners that 
the South produces but few writers to-day, and 
that when they do arise they quickly find their 
way North like Walter Page, James Lane Allen, 
Thomas Nelson Page, William Garrott Brown, 
and many others. The plaint is singularly like 
Wordsworth's, 

" France, 'tis strange. 
Hath brought forth no such souls as we had then. 
** ******* 

No single volume paramount, no code. 
No master-spirit, no determined road ; 
But equally a want of books and men!" 

Surely if any section of the world would 
say with him, 

"Great men have been with us. hands that penn'd 
And tongues that uttered wisdom— better none" 

there must be the freest of atmospheres, the 
broadest tolerance and absolute liberty of opin- 
ion. 

Fortunately this spirit of liberty is rising in 
the South as it did in the North. Mr. Hill him- 
self proved this, as did the occurrence at Trinity 
College, and Professor Sledd's triumphant in- 
stalment as president of the Florida State Col- 
lege is an event to be welcomed. But there must 
be deeper draughts yet from this bitter chalice 
of self-criticism I am commending to your lips 

19 



SELF-CRITICISM 

before there will come that true freedom, that 
divine tolerance for which Chancellor Hill plead- 
ed, and also the social and political reforms we 
all long to see accomplished. We of the North 
know all too well just how unpalatable the 
draught is. It hurts and pains to let the world 
see that one's own have gone wrong or are not 
all they ought to be. Yet there is no other way. 
And so if you would aid you can have no higher 
religion of duty than to inflict those dearest, 
those most faithful wounds that only a friend can 
give, and to do so by truth-telling as one sees it, 
without thought of cost. Have no fear of be- 
ing alone, for it has been truly said : "When 
one stands alone with God for truth, for liberty, 
for righteousness, he may glory in his isolation,'' 
and such isolation is never of long duration. He 
who contends for the right does not need to sow 
dragon's teeth to obtain allies. If, carrying his 
banner manfully, he but stamp his foot upon the 
ground there will spring up not one but a thou- 
sand men panoplied in the shining armor of 
righteousness and full-armed, not with carnal, 
but with spiritual weapons, to march on to pre- 
destined success. 



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